1. Field of Inventions
Embodiments of the present inventions generally relate to exploitation and development of hydrocarbons in an underground reservoir and, more preferably, to an improved process for predicting the behavior of a subterranean, hydrocarbon-bearing formation.
2. Description of Related Art
Reservoir simulation is a process of inferring the behavior of a real reservoir from the performance of a model of that reservoir. Because mass transfer and fluid flow processes in petroleum reservoirs are so complex, reservoir simulations are done using computers. Computer programs that perform calculations to simulate reservoirs are called reservoir simulators. The objective of reservoir simulation is to understand the complex chemical, physical, and fluid flow processes occurring in a petroleum reservoir sufficiently well to be able to predict future behavior of a reservoir and to maximize recovery of hydrocarbons. The reservoir simulator can solve reservoir problems that are generally not solvable in any other way. For example, a reservoir simulator can predict the consequences of reservoir management decisions. Reservoir simulation often refers to the hydrodynamics of flow within a reservoir, but in a larger sense it also refers to the total petroleum system which includes the reservoir, the surface facilities, and any interrelated significant activity.
FIG. 1 illustrates schematically four basic steps in one example of a reservoir simulation of a petroleum reservoir. The first step (step 1) is to construct a mathematical model of a real reservoir based on the chemical, physical, and fluid flow processes occurring in the reservoir. That mathematical model may include a set of nonlinear partial differential equations. The second step (step 2) involves discretization of the reservoir in both time and space. Space is discretized by dividing the reservoir into suitable gridcells with each gridcell having a set of nonlinear finite difference equations. The third step (step 3) is to linearize the nonlinear terms that appear in the nonlinear finite difference equations and, based on this linearization, construct linear algebraic equations assembled in a matrix equation. The fourth step (step 4) is to solve the linear algebraic equations assembled in the matrix equation. The simulation proceeds in a series of timesteps, and steps 3 and 4 are performed at each timestep. The simulation provides a prediction of reservoir behavior, which enables a petroleum engineer to predict reservoir performance, including the rate at which the reservoir can be produced. The accuracy of the model can be checked against the history of the reservoir after the model has been subjected to a simulated recovery process.
However, many simulation methods have been proposed. The method chosen can affect the stability and accuracy of the solution. Some methods require more computational work than other methods on a per-timestep basis. The methods differ primarily on how they treat the way the reservoir variables (such as pressure and saturation) vary in time. Most methods involve variations of the following two procedures:
(1) Explicit procedures use mobilities and capillary pressures computed as functions of saturations at the beginning of a timestep. The saturations are known from the previous timestep calculations. The mobilities and capillary pressures are assumed to maintain the same values during a timestep that they had at the beginning of the timestep.
(2) Implicit procedures use mobility and capillary pressure calculated as functions of saturation at the end of the timestep. The values are not known until calculations for the timestep have been completed. As a result, they must be determined using an iterative process.
The Fully Implicit method is a commonly used implicit procedure. This method is unconditionally stable because it treats both pressure and saturations implicitly. Flow rates are computed using phase pressures and saturations at the end of each timestep. In this method, saturations cannot fall below zero because a fluid can flow only if it is mobile at the end of a timestep. Fluids are mobile only for saturations greater than zero. The calculation of flow rates, pressure and saturation solutions involves the solution of nonlinear equations using a suitable iterative technique. Once the pressures and saturations are solved, these terms will continue to be updated using the new values of pressure and saturation. The iteration process terminates when the convergence criteria are satisfied.
The main drawback of the Fully Implicit method is the amount of computer time that it requires. In terms of computing cost, the method is generally satisfactory in models of single wells or parts of a reservoir, but it can be quite expensive to use in models of entire reservoirs. Several attempts have been made to reduce the computations required, possibly at the cost of accepting a method that does not permit the timestep sizes of the Fully Implicit method. The sequential implicit method, the adaptive implicit method, and the Cascade method have been proposed as ways of reducing the computational time. However, those methods have their own drawbacks. The largest consumer of computational time in the Fully Implicit method is the equation solving step (Step 4 of FIG. 1). This typically consumes about three-fourths of the total computational time.
Accordingly, a need exists for a more computationally efficient method for solving the linear algebraic equations arising in Fully Implicit reservoir simulation.